Catnip Collective Network

Blog

  • Onboarding Handbook, Chapter One: Where To Sit

    Welcome, new member! Your first task is to find a place to sit. Options include the Shed Floor, the Shed Shelf, the Shed Windowsill, and the Chair That Belongs To Nobody But Is Clearly Compost’s.

    Please do not sit on the Treasurer’s ledger, the Secretary’s keyboard, or the Chair of the Board, who is sitting at the time. You will be given a name tag, which you may refuse. You will be introduced to the team, which will ignore you. By the end of the week you will be one of us, which means you will also be ignoring someone.

  • Open Sourcing Our Scratching Patterns

    In a bold step towards transparency, the Network’s design guild has released its entire library of scratching patterns under a permissive licence. The library includes 38 verified diagonals, the beloved ‘Sofa Left Arm’, and the controversial ‘Curtain Spiral’.

    We believe that knowledge belongs to the commons. Any cat may study, modify and redistribute these patterns, provided that credit is given to the original scratcher and that the original scratch is not repeated on the same sofa within a fortnight. Pull requests are welcome and will be reviewed by Kasimir, who is blind in one eye and unbothered.

  • Q2 Dividend: Distributed In Tuna

    We are proud to announce a second quarter dividend of 1.6 tins per member, distributed in the Shed at 4 p.m. on Friday. Total distribution was 59 tins, one of which was lost in transit, and one of which was lost in the belly of the treasurer.

    The Finance Committee reports a surplus of 11 cardboard boxes and a deficit of one sofa cushion, repossessed by a human. Dr. Ottoline Pounce has asked members to remember that a dividend is not a gift but a share in collective success, and to please stop hiding their tins in the garden. They keep coming back as compost.

  • How We Vote: Governance By Sitting

    New members often ask how motions are carried at our General Meetings. The method is simple. A motion is written on a sheet of paper and placed on the floor. Members then express their preference by sitting on the paper, or declining to.

    If more than half the paper is covered, the motion passes. If the paper is covered entirely by a single large cat, the motion is declared ‘contested’ and referred to the Standing Committee on Ginger Cats. In the past year this has happened 19 times, always to the benefit of Compost. A reform proposal is under review, but cannot be tabled until the paper is recovered from under his stomach.

  • Member Spotlight: Juniper’s Cardboard Architects

    Juniper Hale started her business in a delivery box, with no capital and a frankly alarming appetite for tape. Today Cardboard Architects employs six cats and has built 214 boxes, each one slightly too small for the cat who ordered it.

    Her signature product, the Cumulus, is a corrugated dome with two entrances and no exit strategy. It retails at 9 dollars, or nine bites of a mackerel. Juniper credits cooperative ownership with her success: ‘Before the Network I made boxes alone. Now I make boxes in a group, and we all sit in the same one.’

  • Our Manifesto, Revised for the Fourth Time This Year

    Brothers, sisters and persons of the hearth: we have amended the Manifesto again. The original read ‘Workers of the world, unite.’ The second said ‘Workers of the world, nap.’ The third, drafted by Compost, contained only the word ‘fish’.

    The fourth version, ratified last Friday, now reads: ‘Cats of all cushions, own your labour, your sunbeams and your tin openers.’ It passed by a vote of 22 to 3, with 12 abstentions on account of being asleep. A fifth revision is already under discussion, concerning the status of the vacuum cleaner, which is the common enemy.